{"id":70575,"date":"2022-01-19T08:56:42","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T13:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/?p=70575"},"modified":"2022-01-19T08:56:42","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T13:56:42","slug":"qr-code-scams-but-they-seem-so-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/?p=70575","title":{"rendered":"QR Code Scams? But They Seem So Safe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ktsdesign\/Science Library, Getty Images<\/em><\/div>\n
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Linking via QR codes is just as risky as clicking attached email files. If QR code scams continue to grow, it could hurt their effectiveness as a marketing tool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Don\u2019t trust that every QR code will take you someplace you want to go.<\/p>\n

Countries like China have been obsessed with QR codes for a while now \u2013 an obsession that pre-dates the pandemic. But the U.S. is catching on. We\u2019ve seen a recent uptick in uptake as businesses have looked to strategies that would reduce person-to-person contact. Shops and food trucks have started posting QR codes linking to online menus or even Venmo accounts. But as helpful as they can be in some cases, they come with certain risks.<\/p>\n

QR codes found in public places are transporting more and more people to fraudulent websites run by scammers. The latest trend in this rising new form of financial crime is centered around pay-to-park meters.<\/p>\n

Early in January, the Austin Police department issued an announcement warning residents that \u201cfraudulent QR code stickers were discovered on City of Austin public parking meters. People attempting to pay for parking using those QR codes may have been directed to a fraudulent website and made a payment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those QR codes \u2013 that stands for \u201cquick response,\u201d by the way \u2013 are ubiquitous these days. The small 2D square mazes of black and white pixels can carry up to 4 kilobytes of data (around 4,000 characters). They were invented in the 1990s in Japan by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave to track parts and components during the vehicle manufacturing process. Since then, variants of QR codes have circulated around the world. In these QR codes, \u201cyou can embed anything you want. People have put in music files, images, all kinds of things,\u201d says Jason Hong, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. \u201cBut the most common is a web address.\u201d<\/p>\n

WiFi boxes, instruction manuals, and even lightbulbs can come with a QR code for easy access. \u201cThey have them anywhere you need to look up instructions or find some app,\u201d Hong says.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve actually had slow growth, despite being around for a while. When smartphones blew up, they became more popular.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be the case that you had to download a special app that would use your camera to read these things,\u201d Hong says, but now, most smartphones have built-in software that will translate the camera scan into a link that will load through the web browser.<\/p>\n

Yet, Carnegie Mellon computer scientists noted that QR code phishing scams could pose a problem for smartphone users as far back as 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have known for a long time that the problem with QR codes is that they\u2019re lacking \u2018mutual authentication,\u2019\u201d says Hong, which means that there\u2019s no way to tell if the data or link associated with the QR code is bad or legitimate. He compares it to seeing a business card someone dropped on the ground that has a web address: \u201cYou have no idea where it will take you.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in most cases, like with instruction manuals or menus, this probably won\u2019t be an issue. \u201cThere\u2019s no sensitive data that they would retrieve from you, there\u2019s also no easy way for a scammer to get their QR code onto the instruction manual,\u201d Hong says.<\/p>\n

However, scammers are getting more inventive in how they trick their marks into clicking on bad links. And they\u2019re opportunistic when it comes to low effort, high reward scores.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very easy to generate a QR code and create a fake website that looks legitimate, says Hong. And since anybody can place a sticker anywhere, scammers can purposefully choose a location that\u2019s convenient for intercepting information. In the parking payment scam, these QR code stickers were planted on top of the parking meters.<\/p>\n

The QR code allows criminals to cut a step out of the classic phishing website scam, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t have to type in the web address yourself,\u201d Hong says.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor generic QR codes [that go through smartphone cameras], there\u2019s no way to verify, but the city of Pittsburgh, where I\u2019m at right now, there\u2019s a parking app that you can use,\u201d says Hong. \u201cThese apps can check the QR codes \u2026 and if it\u2019s not one of the 2,000 codes that it already knows that exists, it can say it\u2019s a fake one. But there\u2019s no way to do that without additional context about what\u2019s legitimate and what\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

His advice is to not scan random QR codes that are plastered in open spaces around town \u2013 especially those that ask for sensitive personal information or payment. When you do have to offer this type of information, it\u2019s best to go through official city, government, or institutional websites and their approved apps whenever you can.<\/p>\n

The post, \u201cDon\u2019t get scammed by fake QR codes,\u201d appeared first on Popular Science.<\/p>\n

By Charlotte Hu<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2022, Bonnier Corporation. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ktsdesign\/Science Library, Getty Images   Linking via QR codes is just as risky as clicking attached email files. If QR code scams continue to grow, it could hurt their effectiveness as a marketing tool. Don\u2019t trust that every QR code will take you someplace you want to go. Countries like China have been obsessed with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[9,59,61],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70575"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70581,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70575\/revisions\/70581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}